


Bruises.

by TheRookBook



Series: The Rookie (Tumblr Request) [9]
Category: The Rookie (TV 2018)
Genre: Happy Ending, domestic violence situations, read author's note.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-16
Updated: 2021-02-16
Packaged: 2021-03-18 06:13:37
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,608
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29485023
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheRookBook/pseuds/TheRookBook
Summary: She couldn't let them see her as weak. She would survive this. She would be okay.**please read the author's note before reading!!!**
Relationships: Lucy Chen/OC, Tim Bradford/Lucy Chen
Series: The Rookie (Tumblr Request) [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1663039
Comments: 7
Kudos: 99





	Bruises.

**Author's Note:**

> Okay. so first off. If descriptions of domestic violence affect you in any way, DO NOT continue with this fic. It's not really a graphic description, but it does have some detail to it. 
> 
> If you are currently going through a situation. When safe reach out for help.  
> The National Domestic Violence Hotline can be reached at 1.800.799.SAFE (7233). Or visit their website at https://www.thehotline.org/ for more information. 
> 
> I DO NOT condone or promote acts of domestic violence against any person. 
> 
> What I wanted to do was paint the picture of how we got from point A to B to C. Hopefully everything makes sense! 
> 
> I do not own the rights to The Rookie or its characters.

She used to be good at covering the bruises on her arms. She would spend a good portion of her paycheck on the different concealers that she needed to cover up the different hues of purple, black, and yellow that painted her arms. Then she became a rookie with the LAPD which meant long sleeves. It was easier for her to hide them then. Long black sleeves eased her worries. No one could see her arms and she didn’t have to answer any questions about them.

She was a female trying to make it in a male dominant occupation, she couldn’t be seen as weak. Being weak was not an option. If they saw her as weak, then she would be labeled as weak for the rest of her career. All the respect and trust she worked so hard to earn would disappear without a second thought. She would be over.

“What happened to you,” Tim asked catching Lucy just as she stepped out of the locker room. Lucy looked away from him trying to hide the black ring under her eye. She had woke up late and had to sneak out the door without waking David up. Which meant that she did not have time to cover the new bruises from last night.

“Just a boxing accident,” she tried to explain. “Dropped my hands and well,” she said gesturing towards her black eye.

Tim just stared at her. His brows scrunched together as if he was trying to look inside her to find the truth, but Lucy didn’t let it affect her like it used to. She was used to it by now. The way he looked at her when he was trying to find something out used to make her want to crawl into a hole and hide, but now she could handle it. She was strong, not weak.

He nodded slowly, seeming to finally accept the excuse she was giving. “Alright, well,” he said looking away from her for a moment. “Just keep your hands up next time so you won’t get a nice shiner like that again.”

“Noted.”

\--

After that everything was going good until she made that stupid bet with Tim for short sleeves. At the time, she thought it would be nice to wear short sleeves. Then she would like just another police officer, not a fresh rookie wearing long sleeves and a tie. She would be able to blend in without drawing attention to herself.

Then she won the bet. She set Tim up with a friend, who she had become close to during college. She had followed him that night, bringing Jackson along to watch the date from afar. It was the slap heard around the world when Rachel slapped Tim and left the restaurant in a hurry. She had failed. She was going to be stuck in long sleeves for the whole year, all while having to hundreds of pushups at red lights.

Maybe it was a blessing in disguise. She would wear long sleeves and not have to worry about covering up even more bruises.

The next morning, she went to Rachel’s mostly to apologize. Tim was a good guy, he truly was. He was just guarded when it came to letting people in. He came off as an ass, but it was just a decoy. He cared. That’s what she told Rachel anyway. She was getting ready to leave, after offering yet another apology for last night when she looked down and saw a very familiar pair of shoes. She heard a voice call from the back of the house.

Tim with a towel wrapped around his waist stepped into her view. His face was just as surprised to see her as she was to see him. “Short sleeves,” she said shortly, before turning away from the house. Elation, that’s what she felt. She had finally beat Tim at something. Short sleeves!

\--

Lucy ran a paper towel down her arm trying to clean up the small scrapes from tackling a suspect to the ground. The makeup that was covering the fingerprint shaped bruises on her arms circled around the drain of the sink along with a little bit of her blood.

Tim had sent her to clean up upon arriving back at the station while he booked the suspect. It was a rarity that he took it upon himself to do it but given the fact that she had dried blood on her arms, Lucy was not complaining.

She had just grabbed another paper towel to dry her arm when Angela and Harper appeared around the corner of the lockers. “Heard you fought the ground and lost, boot,” Angela said with a smile.

Lucy looked over her shoulder at the older woman. “You could say that.”

“Don’t sound so disappointed, Chen. Bradford is probably going to keep the clip from your body-cam on his phone to show every new boot the proper tackle form before sending them headfirst into a body dummy,” Harper said with a small chuckle.

“Sounds thrilling,” she mumbled, trying to dry her arms gingerly to avoid irritating the fresh scrapes on her arms.

She didn’t notice Angela walking up beside her until the woman grabbed her arm, moving it so that she could examine it. Everything from the old fading bruises to the fresh, deep purple bruises to new scrapes on her arms was on display. She could see Angela’s eyes running up and down her arm and back again. “Lucy… what happened,” she asked after a long pause.

Lucy swallowed hard, looking away from her. “I just fell. Not a big deal,” she said trying to pull her arm away from Angela, but the woman’s grip on her arm didn’t falter. “Seriously, it’s fine.”

“Chen, if something is happening you can tell us,” Harper said stepping closer to the pair.

“I’m fine,” she ground out, jerking her arm out of Angela’s grasp. “It’s nothing for you two to worry about. So, if you’ll excuse me, I have to get back to work,” she snapped walking away from the pair leaving them standing there.

Angela pulled her phone out of her pocket as Lucy left the locker room. ‘Keep an eye on Chen’ she sent Tim in a short text. ‘Something is going on.’

“What do we do now,” Angela asked as silence settled over them.

“I don’t know.”

\--

Luckily, she didn’t run into neither Harper nor Lopez for the rest of the shift. Tim didn’t mention the tracks of bruises on her arms either. Maybe he didn’t even notice them or he chose not to mention them. Lucy knew that Lopez had told him something because he hovered around her for the rest of the shift. He was not more than ten feet away from her for the last four hours of the shift. She wanted to complain. She wanted to physically push him away, but his presence was comforting. 

If she would have thought on her first day that Tim Bradford would offer her any sense of comfort, Lucy would have checked herself into a hospital. Now, he was somewhere she found comfort. He had become that for her, yet she could not bring herself to tell him the truth about the bruises.

She finally made it home that night close to nine. David was lounging on the couch, a long neck bottle in his hand with his eyes locked on the big screen on the wall. “Come sit down,” he said never taking his eyes off the movie on the screen.

Lucy did as he said slowly. She sat down beside him on the couch tentatively. David draped his arm around her shoulder, pulling Lucy into him. Lucy swallowed heavily trying to calm her racing heart. She could not let him know that she was afraid. It would only allow fuel to the fire. A fire that was already burning uncontrolled and dangerous. Like an uncontrolled wildfire burning dangerously in a dense forest, destruction would soon follow the flames...along with bruises.

..

They had been fighting since eight in the morning. Lucy had accidentally left her wet bath towel on the floor of the bathroom and it set him off. It was a simple mistake. She meant to go back and pick it up after getting dressed, but David walked into the bathroom before she had a chance, and just like that the bomb started to tick.

“You fuckin’ whore,” David spat, closing the distance between them again. His hand grabbed her neck, slamming Lucy against the wall. His hand tightening every passing minute, slowly cutting over her flow of air. “You think you can sleep with another man and I wouldn’t find out,” he seethed, his nostrils flaring as he held her against the wall.

“David,” she choked out, “Please. I didn’t. Stop.”

“Why should I believe a dumb bitch like you,” he snarled, tightening his hand around her throat. “I saw the texts between you and your training officer. I should have known a damn whore like you would sleep your way to the top.”

“David,” Lucy gasped. “I can---can’t breathe,” she tried to say as her hand pulled at the hand around her neck trying to get some air into her lungs. He held her there for a few more seconds before finally letting go of her neck causing Lucy to crumble to the ground. Lucy tried to curl herself into a ball trying to protect herself from the menace standing above her, as sobs racked her body.

After a moment, David stomped away from Lucy’s shaking form towards the living room. Lucy laid there curled in a ball against the hallway wall as the sound of the TV being turned on filled her ears.

She was not sure how long she had been lying there when there was a knock on the door. She heard David grumble as he was forced to push himself off the couch before heading towards the door. “LAPD,” she heard a voice call before another knock followed.

The front door creaked as David pulled it open. “Good day officers,” she heard him say, and Lucy knew he was smiling, trying to portray the image of a happy boyfriend. “What can I do for you?”

“We’ve received a complaint about a possible dispute. Are you the only one home?”

“No, sir. Just me and my girlfriend, but we are all good here. You know how things can get in the bedroom,” he tried to excuse. “We’re really sorry that the neighbors disturbed you two, but as you can see, we are fine here.”

Lucy heard a hand slap against the door. “Where is your girlfriend sir,” she heard a female voice say. “We need to talk to her too.”

“Not a problem. Everything is okay, isn’t it babe,” David called back into the house.

Lucy couldn’t find her voice as she continued to lay there on the floor. She knew she should say something. That way the officers would leave, and David would leave her alone, but Lucy only laid there in silence. She tried to move, but it felt like she was in shock. Her heart was still racing, he could still feel his hand wrapped around her throat. She could still see the pure evil in his eyes as he stared at her.

She heard David start complaining as the officers entered the house. No doubt coming to make sure that she wasn’t dead, even though she wished she was. They were going to find out her secret. Everyone would know. Everyone would see her as weak.

Warm hands touched her shoulder, causing Lucy to jerk out of her thought as she looked up frantically. She expected to see David’s cold, cold blue eyes staring down at her. Instead, she was met with warm, concerned dark brown ones. A pair of eyes that she had looked at nearly every day for the last ten months. “Lucy,” Angela said softly before she swallowed heavily. “Lucy…Are you okay?”

Lucy could only shake her head in response as her sobs started up again. “Okay. Okay, we’re going to get you some help, okay? You’re safe now. He won’t hurt again.”

“Lopez,” they heard a voice call from the front door. “Everything okay back there?”

Lucy’s only sobbed harder into Angela’s shoulder as Tim’s voice filled her ears. Of course, he had to be here too. She had worked so hard to make herself look strong, to make herself not be seen as weak, yet everything she worked so hard for was about to be destroyed.

“Tim, hook him up. I’m calling a bus.”

They could hear David start to complain at the front of the house as Tim slipped the cold metal cuffs around his wrists. Angela reached for her radio, but Lucy stopped her. “Please…please don’t. I can’t…not-please just don’t,” she finally managed to spit out.

“Okay. We don’t have to call an ambulance. Can you stand up for me so we can get out this hallway?”

Lucy nodded against her shoulder. Angela let go of the younger woman standing to her own feet before reaching down to help Lucy stand to her feet. Angela walked into the kitchen first just as Tim stepped back inside the house. “What do we got? She dead?” Angela only had a chance to shake her head before Lucy stepped out of the darkness of the hallway and into the light of the main room.

She saw the confusion wash over Tim’s face as he took in her bloodshot eyes with fresh black rings around them. She knew he could see the red handprint around her throat as he looked her over. Lucy reached across her body holding her arm nervously, giving the opportunity to see more of the fresh bruise that painted her body.

He had to blink several times as he looked at her. Almost as if he didn’t believe what was right in front of him. Lucy saw him swallow heavier than ever before as he looked back up at her face. She heard the faintest hitch in his breath as he opened his mouth to speak, but no words came out. “Lucy,” he said softly.

Tim crossed the room slowly, taking careful, calculated steps until he was right in front of her. They didn’t say anything else as Tim’s long arms wrapped around her fragile frame pulling her into him. He didn’t care about the standard procedure. He cared about the woman crying into his chest as he held her close. He cared about Lucy.

He buried his nose into her dark brown hair taking in the familiar scent of lavender before placing a gentle kiss on the top of her head. “You’re okay,” he whispered so softly that only the two of them could hear. “I got you. You’re gonna be okay. I got you,” he whispered over and over as Lucy continued to sob into his chest.

He looked over at Angela, tears sliding from her own eyes and down her cheeks as she watched Lucy come undone once more in his arms. He motioned towards the door and she nodded understanding immediately. She looked back at them once more shaking her head slowly as she wiped a falling tear from her cheek.

Tim refocused his attention on the woman in his arms. He held her tightly against him muffling her sobs that shot daggers into his heart. He was going to let her cry until she got it all out no matter how long it took. “It’s okay. He won’t hurt you again, I promise.”

**Author's Note:**

> A request from Tumblr. Thank you for reading! Comments and kudos are appreciated, but not required. Still not beta'd but oh well. Mistakes are my own. 
> 
> If you need help with a current situation where DV is occurring. Consider calling or visiting the website and see the options available to you. 
> 
> Love you all. Stay safe.  
> More soon!


End file.
